Level 46 Mesmer, 21 Elementalist, 14 Ranger and level 10 minimum of all other classes by end of the second beta weekend. That's less than a week of gameplay total. Not grinding, just playing, and crafting, and helping friends, and pvp'ing, and never used anything from the item mall.

Where is this grind you speak of?

Alrighty! So, I'm new to the MOBA genre. I expressed some interest and a friend recommended I start with LoL since it's a little more user-friendly, so I did. Much as I'm enjoying it, I seldom stick with one game exclusively, I like variety so I don't burnout, so I'm looking at DoTA/DoTA 2 now. I have some questions first, though, and it would be great if someone could clue me in:

1 - Is there any form of progression? I sort of like that LoL lets me gain points to unlock things, but the reason I like it is none of those things are particularly essential. I don't like feeling like I'm forced to grind for points in order to be competitive, is that something I'd have to worry about with Dota1/2?

2 - Are there significant gameplay differences between DoTA 1 and 2, or can I just play 1 for a while to prepare for 2?

3 - WTF is "deny"? I've tried googling but everything I've found on the subject either devolves into people raging at each other, or is explained in a way that's not particularly noobie friendly.

4 - Finally, the community. I've heard some pretty terrible things about the DoTA community that's putting me off from trying. It's not just the trolls, I can ignore the ragers and whiners and personally I'm more likely to giggle at the name-calling than be offended by it. What I -do- worry about however, is that supposedly DoTA has a higher learning curve, and if no one is ever nice enough to suggest insight or take me aside and say, "Hey, you're doing this wrong, try this instead," how will I learn? So yeah, what's up with that? Any newbie zones/groups/whatevers that I can be pointed at?

Thanks, guys!